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A DRAMATIC CRITIC
crafty not to betray the secret of his par-
tiality.
The newspapers whose criticism of the
drama is thus sordidly biased are soon
found out, and lose all or much of their
influence with their readers. And having
made this big declaration in the interest of
reason and common sense, I must meekly
subject it to a discount of about seventy-
five per cent, and confess that a large
majority of all the persons who read the
daily journals have not the faintest notion
of comparing or distinguishing the values
of various censures. The great body of
patrons of the theatre are, indeed, alike
indifferent and, directly, impervious to
criticism of any sort; they swarm into
the playhouses with an indiscriminating
eagerness of desire, which seems as mas-
terful as the blind instinct that compels
the migration of schools of fish; they are
laws unto themselves, and find out and
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